www.savememorialpark.org, Have you been there?

A group of Maplewood residents has an idea about how development of the old police station site should proceed.  www.savememorialpark.org is the website created by these residents to organize support for their cause. Visit their facebook page.

I’ve written previously about how the old police station can be redeveloped, one vision really I have, on how this space can be used to better integrate all residents into the social fiber of our community.

Since then, local news sites (The Local, Patch.com)have published articles on the progression of development efforts.  Developers have submitted proposals on what to build on the site and our local government is deliberating on how to proceed.  The residents of www.savememorialpark.org draw the line at proposed developments by developers:

image from savememorialpark.org

“The Township of Maplewood is planning to develop a site right next to Memorial Park with a 50 foot high, 50-unit rental building (plus parking). While residential development may make sense for the area, a 50-foot building is completely inappropriate on the Park. It would be the second highest building in town. With tax abatements being dangled in front of developers, an abysmal real-estate market, and a site that may need significant infrastructure work, the Township has failed to convince us that this will be in our economic best interest. In fact, we believe this may prove costly to us.”

The creators of the site are calling for the public participation of residents in our township on the issue.  Public Participation Option: “It is critical that people attend this meeting and let the Planning Board know what they think about this plan.  The Board will then make a series of recommendations to the Township Committee, which may vote on the redevelopment plan as soon as November 16th.” The Planning Board meeting on Tuesday, November 10th at 8 p.m. at the Municipal Building on Valley Street.

What I hope will come out of our local development efforts is that our community creates an acceptable living environment for all residents.  To do this local government officials, administrators, residents, and developers included must listen to each other and work together.  How? By setting goals and visions for the town and for the development, by analyzing current problems with the site, and incorporating alternative solutions from antagonistic positions (the rational planning model) we can add a development that is an asset to our community.

Health Care Reform: House Votes yes, 220-215

The AP writes that the House has passed “landmark health care legislation Saturday night to expand coverage to tens of millions who lack it and place tough new restrictions on the insurance industry.” Read the article “House passes health care bill on close vote” by David Espo. This is not exclusively a victory for President Obama.

image from sicoret.com

What does this bill mean to you?

It’s off to the Senate for this bill. If the identical bill passes in the Senate it is sent to the President to be signed into law…or vetoed.  Read about the 14 steps of the Legislative Process (how bills become law or not.)

A thought…It is important that the policy makers who write to implement the law at the federal and state level keep the integrity of the legislation intact…if the policy implementing the bill is too stringent or exclusive we could be back to the drawing board…

© W. S. Hughes 2009

GUEST BLOGGER: BARBARA O’BRIEN ON CANCER TREATMENT AND HEALTH CARE REFORM

PerfectlyPlanned readers please welcome Guest Blogger Barbara O’Brien on the topic of health care reform. I’ve written on the need for reform and the impact of the current health care system on coverage for young adults.

Barbara O’Brien is a strong advocate of blogging as a means of giving the public power in the media, as well as opposing the Iraq War. She has a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of Missouri. O’Brien also writes and edits the Buddhism topic at About.com.

Barbara – One argument you may hear against health care reform concerns cancer survival rates. The United States has higher cancer survivor rates than countries with national health care systems, we’re told. Doesn’t this mean we should keep what we’ve got and not change it?

Certainly cancer survival rates are a critical issue for people suffering from the deadly lung cancer mesothelioma. So let’s look at this claim and see if there is any substance to it.

First, it’s important to understand that “cancer survival rate” doesn’t mean the rate of people who are cured of a cancer. The cancer survival rate is the percentage of people who survive a certain type of cancer for a specific amount of time, usually five years after diagnosis.

For example, according to the Mayo Clinic, the survivor rate of prostate cancer in the United States is 98 percent. This means that 98 percent of men diagnosed with prostate cancer are still alive five years later. However, this statistic does not tell us whether the men who have survived for five years still have cancer or what number of them may die from it eventually.

Misunderstanding of the term “survivor rate” sometimes is exploited to make misleading claims. For example, in 2007 a pharmaceutical company promoting a drug used to treat colon cancer released statistics showing superior survival rates for its drug over other treatments. Some journalists who used this data in their reporting assumed it meant that the people who survived were cured of cancer, and they wrote that the drug “saved lives.” The drug did extend the lives of of patients, on average by a few months. However, the mortality rate for people who used this drug — meaning the rate of patients who died of the disease — was not improved.

But bloggers and editorial writers who oppose health care reform seized these stories about “saving lives,” noting that this wondrous drug was available in the United States for at least a year before it was in use in Great Britain. Further, Britain has lower cancer survival rates than the U.S. This proved, they said, the superiority of U.S. health care over “socialist” countries.

This is one way propagandists use data to argue that health care in the United States is superior to countries with government-funded health care systems. They selectively compare the most favorable data from the United States with data from the nations least successful at treating cancer. A favorite “comparison” country is Great Britain, whose underfunded National Health Service is struggling.

It is true that the United States compares very well in the area of cancer survival rates, but other countries with national health care systems have similar results.

For example, in 2008 the British medical journal Lancet Oncology published a widely hailed study comparing cancer survival rates in 31 countries. Called the CONCORD study, the researchers found that United States has the highest survival rates for breast and prostate cancer. However, Japan has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in men, and France has the highest survival for colon and rectal cancers in women. Canada and Australia also ranked relatively high for most cancers. The differences in the survival data for these “best” countries is very small, and is possibly caused by discrepancies in reporting of data and not the treatment result itself.

And it should be noted that Japan, France, Canada and Australia all have government-funded national health care systems. So, there is no reason to assume that changing the way health care is funded in the U.S. would reduce the quality of cancer care.

Additional details about blogger: O’Brien is a popular blogging advocate and left-wing blogger who writes the blog Mahablog. O’Brien’s book Blogging America Political Discourse in a Digital Nation discusses the changes blogging has made in America’s political culture, and the left-right debate.

If you would like to be a guest blogger on a topic covered in this blog that you’re passionate about, please leave a comment or send an email to residentplanningeek@gmail.com.  Also, refer to this link on the ground rules.

© W. S. Hughes 2009

‘09 Election Gubernatorial & Township Committee results

Chris Christie (R) is our new Governor. Who won locally? Kathy Leventhal (D) & Jerry Ryan (D). Want the skinny on how Maplewood voted? Read more.

© W. S. Hughes 2009